AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“So how do we strike when we’re still as blind as always?” I knew I sounded a touch petulant, but it didn’t help to offer suggestions if there were none.
We’ll be too late.That inner pessimist reared its ugly head, and I began to pace the length of the conference table. Claude was a sadist. The Beaumonts knew they’d been caught slipping a venomous serpent into my bed, and because the action had been a failure, it had resulted in a more ruthless, cunning strike—one I’d not seen coming. How well they’d played me.I was a damn fool!
Jakob didn’t shout, but the sharp tone in his voice was judge, jury, and executioner. “You have the daughter. Use her or end her.”
What if she’s not part of this scheme?There it was, that soft, insistent voice that kept blossoming in the back of my mind. I said nothing. Couldn’t.
“You’ve fallen for her.” Jakob let out a harsh laugh. “She’s blinded you.”
I grit my teeth. “I’m not sure she’s the solution to this problem,” I ground out, stabbing my hand at the screen.
“But how could she not be?! Talia was sent to kill you. She is a great actress; the ruse to play the victim in her family is such a good lie that you believed it! You should know that the only end goal to this kidnapping is to cause you misery, Constantine. They want to make you reckless. They’re lining up their resources, no doubt ready to take you out.” Jakob sucked in a sharp breath.
I clenched my fists and walked to one of the windows. After a vicious yank on the blinds, I stared into the bright blaze of daylight.
“Maybe he’s right, Con.” Adrian’s voice was haggard, the voice of a tormented soul. “Maybe she only said she wants to end her family to secure her position.”
While my inner voice screamed at the injustice of the accusation, that horned fiend on my back taunted me that the evidence was pretty damning given Talia had been trained by her family to take me out.A family who abused her.Maybe it was an act, though. All of it.
The bloodthirsty, desperate monster inside me would not be laid to rest. That was my sister up there, and all I could think was that I needed to get her back. I turned back to Jakob. “Okay, so you think this was their plan all along? That we would figure out Talia was an assassin, so they put her out in the open as a target for us to focus on?” I reasoned aloud.
“Yes, that’s what I think,” Jakob bit out, the sharp tone pushing through his cold mask of indifference.
In the end, it didn’t matter, because Iryna was paying for this war.But they’ve left a soldier behind enemy lines.And it was my turn to make a move.
I held Jakob’s stare. “What’s your next course of action with the brother?”
“He didn’t ask for terms.” It was a half answer.
“That’s because he’s doing this to hurt me. He wants me to feel weak.” I slammed my palm into the nearest chair, sending it hurtling across the room. “Well, he’s fucking succeeded there.”
“But they don’t have the upper hand.” Jakob slid his hands into his pockets. “Doing this puts the Beaumonts in a desperate position.”
“Sure. That’s great,” I bit out. “Meanwhile, my sister will be tortured to ribbons and probably won’t survive.”
Jakob blinked. “I didn’t say winning this fight was worth the price.”
The fucking pragmatist. He was right, though. There was no denying it.
“Do you really have the stomach for what that means, Con?” Adrian suddenly cut in, looking between me and Jakob. He emphasized his words by jabbing his fingers into the tabletop. “And do you really think your wife is in on this?”
There it was—the ugly truth.Did I?
I nodded once.
“I’m glad to see you don’t trust her,” Jakob responded, turning his attention back to his computer and typing a string of chat into an encrypted dialogue box.
Do I trust her?My immediate response was a big “fuck no!” But why did my chest constrict painfully whenever I thought about her intelligent gaze? I clenched my fists. I had been so close to trusting her—with everything.
But the truth was that Talia was sent to kill me. With Jakob’s help, I’d been monitoring her movements to prevent that from happening, but that was when it was only my life at stake. I could see now that because we’d focused on the obvious threat, we’d played right into the devil’s hands. Still, part of me didn’t know what to think after the last few days with Talia. Were they all an act? I didn’t know. It was all such a muddled mess.
I might not know what to think about Talia, but dammit, I blamed her for the situation we were in. It was like the song my sister loved—the song that spoke of loving an illusion. I was in love with a fairytale, and now Iryna would pay for my blindness. I deserved to hurt.
The buzz of the computer fan tormented my ears as pressure built behind my eyes. Jakob’s employees kept coming in and out, jarring my nerves.This can’t be true.How was this happening to me? I cut my attention to the paused video feed. The ogre’s face was distorted in the frozen image. The simple truth was that he’d taken my sister in broad daylight from a restaurant. Without a single witness.
“They’re going to pay,” I whispered.
“Constantine, think about what you’re saying,” Adrian cautioned, but the shake in his voice told me he wasn’t convinced either.
